


For I Have Touched the Sky

by hafital



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-08
Updated: 2008-09-08
Packaged: 2017-10-28 04:02:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/303519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hafital/pseuds/hafital
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose feels thin, spread out across countless universes. She thinks she's left bits of herself in each time and place she's visited.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For I Have Touched the Sky

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to dragonfly (on DW) for the super quick beta read. The title alludes to the Star Trek: TOS episode For the World is Hollow and I have Touched the Sky. No connection, I just really like that title.

It's a starry starry night. Rose leans against a brick wall on the roof of the Torchwood building, taking a break from the frustration of the dimension cannon. They'd tried all day to make it work, but nothing. They'd tried for most of that year. The science was good, she knew, but it seemed just this once impossible remained too far out of her reach. On the rooftop the wind is brisk, the moon rising slowly over the cityscape, dotted with drifting zeppelins.

Rose counts the stars. She can name some of them now, their real names, or at least the names humans have given them, some with beautiful names of gods and goddesses, some with just numbers and a letter. But she still likes to call them "twinkle number one with the extra sparkle" and "big bossy star with too much shine". It makes Mickey laugh, at least.

She's staring up at Orion's Belt just as the buckle suddenly winks out of existence. "Hang on, that isn't right."

The nose of Canus Major disappears as she looks at it -- there for a heartbeat then gone. "That isn't right, either."

Her phone rings. It's Mickey. "You'd better come down here."

***

Mickey stands back from the console with his hand at the back of his head, and her dad is next to him, looking just as bewildered. Everyone else has stopped to stare. The lights on the cannon are blinking, gears whirring, and the screen is going crazy with data scrolling faster than anyone can read it.

"What did you do?" she asks, skidding to a halt. She wrinkles her nose, smelling ozone burning.

Mickey barely looks at her, moving closer to the computer screen, tapping at a keyboard. "Nothing. It just started blipping and groaning by itself. I did nothing. Hang on." His eyes widen. "Can't be." He moves from screen to screen. Rose can see the green text from the computer reflected on Mickey's face. He turns to her. "It's working," he says, as surprised as she is. "Near enough, anyway. Not just registering this universe, but all of them."

Rose can only stare. She heard him, but it takes a moment to fully comprehend. "How?"

"It wasn't us. Not anything we did," says Mickey, and Rose blinks. "The walls of reality are thinning. I can blow a hole right through them."

His voice cracks a little. They face the dimension cannon. Rose puts her hand on the smooth metal casing and the lights blink and then suddenly everything goes dark.

***

Hours pass and she hasn't stopped to eat or sleep until her mum drags her by the hand from the building. "You've got to at least wash before people start keeping their distance. Come home, just for a few hours, till morning. I don't see what killing yourself will do, the blasted thing isn't working."

"But it worked. It did. And then I don't know what happened. I think I ruined it."

"You'll get it working again, no doubt," says Jackie, in that tone that said she'd rather the cannon rusted away. Rose lets herself lean against her mum for just a moment.

Rose looks at the sky as they walk. In the excitement of ozone and blinking lights from the cannon, she'd forgotten about the missing buckle. This time Orion's entire belt is gone, and Cassiopeia is in hiding. Jackie turns and asks what's wrong.

"The stars."

"What about them?"

"They're disappearing."

"How do you mean?" Jackie looks up. They're in the middle of the street, just down the block from Torchwood.

It starts happening before she realises, the world fading, as if stretched, as if... _The walls are thinning._ Rose faces her mother, taking a step toward her. "Mum."

Jackie's eyes are wide, a hand coming up to cover her mouth. "Rose?"

The world shimmers, and her mother fades away right before Rose's eyes. It only takes Rose a moment to figure it out: she's the one that faded; she's the one that left her mum behind. She looks up and sees Orion's Belt, complete with buckle.

***

Rose is gone exactly ten minutes, by her watch, the time marked as soon as she realised what happened. Long enough to determine the reality she found herself in is not the one she just left.

Her heart hammers, she feels faint. For one wild moment she runs around the corner, thinking that maybe the TARDIS would be waiting, but she only runs into a woman with ginger hair. The woman doesn't even look at her, walking purposefully away, and Rose is left alone.

One world is peaceful, just an average evening in London, business as usual, all she sees is that woman walking to a blue car -- there's something on the woman's back. A black thing, something wrong. Rose can't quite see before the woman drives away -- and the other world rings with the yells of her mother calling for her. Rose turns, feeling the tattered veils of reality give, and steps back into her world, her father's universe.

Rose returns, sliding from one universe to the next as if sliding between curtains.

"Oh thank God," cries Jackie, running for her. But she's not alone. Rose sees her father and Mickey, and others from Torchwood.

"Oi," says Mickey, knock knocking her head. "What do you think you're doing?"

Rose grins, pushing her mother away, gently. "Well done, boys," she says to everyone, impressed with the set up she sees. There's a tent and the street cordoned off, alien tech all over the place. "Not bad for ten minutes time."

"Ten minutes? More like bloody hours. The sun's about to rise," says Jackie, more annoyed than upset.

Rose looks up to the sky, stars fading with the growing light. She can't see Orion's Belt. "The stars," she says.

Pete came close. "We know. Come on, love," he says. "We'd better get you tested."

She resists the pull on her arm. "I went to another universe. I was pulled across," she says, and all the members of her family, all those she loves, stop and look at her.

***

They take blood samples, make her touch her toes and check her reflexes. They strip her down to her bra and underpants and put her under high-intensity light. She blinks, fidgets because she's cold. She shrieks when she's suddenly showered with water.

"God damnit, Mickey," she yells, spitting.

"Sorry, sorry, couldn't resist," Mickey laughs, throwing her a towel. "We're all done. You're a hundred percent Rose, exactly the same as when you left."

Rose wrings water from her hair. "Good to know. Anything else?" She follows Mickey, afraid to go near the dimension cannon. All of the lights are on, blinking, whirling, like Christmas, and she doesn't want to ruin it.

"Yeah, there's something else." He doesn't continue, only sits in a swivel chair by the computer console. She's slow to see it, to realise the blinking lights aren't random. There's a pattern, complex and repeating. She walks to the nearest computer screen, familiar enough with the maths to see how the cannon tunes to a universe, to read the transdimensional coordinates, how it slings a band of energy around a person or a thing and punches through to another dimension.

She shivers in her towel and bare feet, still damp. "Oh my God."

Mickey swivels to face the cannon. "Yeah."

They look at each other. Mickey stands and puts his arms around her.

***

Her mum brings a change of clothes. Rose zips up the leather jacket and flips her hair out from around her neck. She turns to Pete. "What about the stars?" she asks, sipping coffee.

Her father stands in front of the large windows of the conference room. The sound from the rest of the building is muffled. She loves the conference room, where she can see all of the activity of Torchwood, feel the pulse of energy that runs through everything without becoming lost in the mayhem. "We don't know yet," he says, his hands in his pockets. "It's not good, whatever it is."

She smiles a little. "Figured that part out."

They fall silent, and she looks away from the weight of his gaze. He knows her so well. At times she thinks he knows her better than her mum, better even than Mickey. "Have you thought this through?" he asks.

"'Course I have." But she can hear the uncertainty just underneath her voice. She takes a moment, walks to him, conscious of the fact that, if she gets what she wishes, she'll lose moments like this forever. "I have."

He nods. "Well then, I suppose it's a good thing that I don't think we have a choice anymore."

"What do you mean?"

"The dimension cannon comes to life, all on its own. The stars are disappearing -- that could be the end of everything." He shrugs. "And then there's you. Your mother said you faded away, right before her eyes." He takes one hand out of his pocket and cups her face.

"I'm all right," she says but her voice wavers just a bit. He nods and lets her go.

***

Still in the conference room, it's nighttime once again. Rose stands by the wall of windows looking out over the city. Evening had come, and the sky is once again dark. Too dark. Not a storm approaching, nor the darkness of winter. The sky isn't merely black; it's empty.

Staring at the vacant heavens, she feels the tattered veils of reality brushing at her skin. If she turns just so, if she moves her head or walks in a certain direction, she can slide, slip, spin into another world, another dimension, maybe another time.

They can't wait for testing the cannon more. Jackie stands at the other side of the window, watching Rose more than the sky. Tony sleeps on a cot in a corner, her mum refusing to part from any member of her family. "You'll figure this out," Jackie says.

Rose smiles. "This is bigger than a typical alien invasion."

"Yeah, but, that's what you do. You're the best. You always figure it out, in the end. You're like _him_ now, more than before." She laughs a little. "I suppose it was bound to happen."

"What was?"

"Losing you, darling." Jackie's eyes catch some of the light from the city. She isn't crying, but there is sadness there.

Rose shifts her feet, looking away. On the other side of the earth, did the sun still shine? "We need the Doctor."

Jackie sighs. "I suppose we do."

Over the intercom, she hears Mickey shout. "I've got him, I found it. Rose, get down here now."

She's already moving before he finishes speaking. In the dimension cannon room, Mickey is moving from monitor to monitor. "A transdimensional phone call -- beat that, Doctor. Hah!"

"Okay. What do I do?"

"Speak here," says Mickey tapping a microphone, "and that's the screen, set to call the TARDIS computer. Video to video." He smirks, and then nods for her to start.

The screen is blank, dark. It starts flickering like a light shorting out. She sees the Doctor. It really is him, his profile turning away, the back of his head. He's in his suit. He's in darkness, and she can just make out seats like on an airplane and gray walls. Not the TARDIS, but she doesn't care. It's him. "Oh my God, Doctor. Can you hear me? Doctor!"

"Wait," says Mickey, looking closely at a different monitor. "Something's not right. That's not the TARDIS."

"But that's him." She turns to Mickey, pointing to the screen, looking back, but the screen has gone blank. "No. Get him back."

"Hang on." Mickey rotates a dial, types quickly into three different keyboards, punching numbers into a keypad on the cannon. "Okay. Try again."

Rose looks at the monitor. This time she can definitely see the coral beams of the inside of the TARDIS. "Doctor," she calls, as clearly as she can, calling again and again. A woman with ginger hair appears, just for a moment before the screen goes blank again.

Mickey curses, kicking a chair. "Damn it. I don't know. Maybe if I--"

Before he can continue, Rose hugs him tight, and he falls silent. She squeezes until he puts his arms around her and holds her close. "You're great," she says. "You're fantastic. I have faith. I believe in you."

"Yeah, you always were a bit of a nutter," he says, but his voice is tender. He kisses her, friendly but lingering for a moment. "Go on," he says, pushing her away. "Let me work. Get some sleep while you can."

She nods and leaves him. She doesn't think she can sleep, not with the adrenalin running through her blood, but she'll pretend, for him, for them.

***

Lying in the dark, on the cot set up in her office, she thinks of gingerbread houses, with frosting roofs and bubble-gum windows. A garden full of sugar drop flowers and candy floss grass waving in the wind.

These universes, stacked against each other, like files in a cabinet, or piles of books, one next to the next, stretched out into infinity. Forever and ever. The multiverse, he'd called it once. Sealed off, except for when they're not.

But that wasn't quite right. Every universe existed in the same space and time as the next, hundreds of possibilities all pulsing through each moment. And the walls are thinning. One word can spin it out, unravel time and space. One wrong step.

With her eyes closed, she replays everything that's happened so far, over and over again, searching for something, anything. Gingerbread, ginger hair. She thinks of the woman on the monitor in the TARDIS and wonders who she is. They are alike, this unnamed woman and her, they both have ridden the stars.

Something shakes the building hard. The windows shatter, the walls crack, and plaster dust falls all over her.

Rose gets up and runs from the room, runs through the door, runs into a different universe. "Oh."

***

She tumbles, and trips, catching herself, and just stands there, in darkness, in shock, until her training kicks in and she starts moving. She's on an abandoned street, different than before. Rose looks up. The sky is dark. Empty.

She hears cars screeching in the night, and people yelling, explosions going off. There's a familiar whine, a familiar discharge of energy. It tickles her memory. She focuses, becoming still, staring at the trees on the street and the sidewalk littered with rubbish. There is no breeze; the air is stagnant.

Her phone rings. She knows when she looks at the screen it won't say TARDIS. It's Mickey. Her heart lifts. "Oh, well done. How are you getting through?"

"Rose! Oh my God, it worked. Trust me, you really don't want to know." She grins. "Where the hell are you?"

"Can't you tell?"

"Not really. Oh wait," He mumbles something. She presses the phone closer to her ear; there's interference. She thinks of Void stuffs, little floaty bits of red and green, and she shivers, realizing each time she fades between dimensions she risks getting stuck in the Void. "I can sort of trace your phone. We're out of synch, though."

Of course they are, she laughs a little, looking around, although it wasn't much like the London she'd known, in either universe. Something is wrong. "Mickey?" she can't help the fear in her voice.

There's an explosion nearby. She jumps, instinctively crouching. Mickey yells in her ear.

She doesn't answer, moving closer. Some part of her knows already, some part of her as made the connection. She sees the domed head of a dalek taking aim at a family trying to get into their car and gasps softly. "Oh God. It can't be."

Mickey's yelling, but she doesn't answer.

She turns, just as the dalek shrieks, and concentrates on Mickey, on her dad and her mum.

***

This time she was gone for nearly two hours, only twelve minutes for her. There's a collective sigh of relief when she returns. "Okay, you're not allowed to do that any more," says Mickey, really quite mad, the first words out of his mouth when she fades back into reality.

"Sorry," she says, "Not like I planned it."

"Still." He's already moving back to the cannon.

"The sun didn't rise," says Pete by way of an explanation for the nerves and the stress. There is dust hanging in the air, debris on the floor, furniture and equipment overturned.

"What happened?" She looks around at the mess.

"Best we can tell, the earth has moved."

She stops and looks at her dad full on. "I'm sorry, did you just say--"

"That's not everything. The dimension cannon, it's picked up some readings. Dal--"

"Daleks. I know, I've seen them. In the other world, the Doctor's universe. It must be." She's certain now, that the universe that keeps pulling at her, keeps snagging on her like a plastic bag caught on a wire fence, is the Doctor's.

"We only get the echo of it here. The same with this… earth move thing." He shrugs at his lack of proper description. They fall silent.

Jackie comes up, Tony in her arms. "Are you going to tell her?"

"Tell me what?"

Pete's puts his hands in his pockets, looking from his wife to Rose. Rose sees the lines around his eyes that weren't there before. A little bit less hair, a little more gray. He doesn't say anything, takes her by the shoulder over to Mickey who's fiddling with large, round disks, very much like the alien tech they'd used years ago, that time, that terrible, terrible day when--

She looks at Mickey and at her dad. "This it, then?"

***

She listens to Mickey as he preps her, handing her one large disk with a big button in the center. "We're at a slight advantage because this universe runs ahead of the Doctor's, but the timing can't be precise. We're guessing, actually," he says with a grin, "but I figure that's better than nothing, and it's what he'd do. And I can at least put you ahead of the daleks. We can track the TARDIS, but--" He trails off.

"I get it. Don't know where I'm going, what universe I'll be in, or who I'll see. Business as usual, yeah?"

He grins. "Basically. Ready?"

"As ready as you are."

He grips her hand, squeezes. "Keep your phone on and active, I'll be able to uplink through it onto that world's UNIT computers."

"Right. Phone on, check."

"And we'll be able to monitor you from here. I think."

"You think?" She feels a slight edge of panic. This is different than when she fades in and out. This time she's being catapulted across dimensions.

He grins again, one hundred percent Mickey -- cocky and brilliant -- as he double checks the screens and taps at keyboards. "Don't worry, babe. I've got you." She rolls her eyes but feels immeasurably safer, relaxing into a stance, nodding when she's ready. "One, two," he pauses, looks at her. "And, three."

Rose gasps, not expecting to be wrapped in a ball of lightning and spit out onto an unlit street corner. She promptly nearly falls on hundreds of small marshmallow-like creatures. For a moment she thinks she must be hallucinating. The creatures make cooing noises and happy little hops, all moving in the same direction.

"Goodness, hello," she says to the funny little white things, all of whom basically ignore her. "This can't be the right universe." But she's too good at her job to jump to conclusions, already following the creatures in the direction they're taking.

She's in London, in the city proper. She turns a corner and stops, the little white creatures squeaking in annoyance when they bump into her. Above, in the sky still dense with stars, a large space ship hovers, its lights spinning.

There are people lining the street, unable to walk through the hundreds, thousands of little white creatures. The creatures cheer, they jump up and down. Barricades have been set up. Rose spots UNIT personnel. With a smile she approaches a young officer. He's tall, good looking, but has that uncertain look on his face she's come to know well from some of her Torchwood recruits, the look that crosses "How did it come to this?" with "Nothing will ever be the same again."

In the distance, high in the sky, a blonde woman is held in an energy beam of some sort. She's talking to the creatures. She's calling them her children.

"Excuse me," Rose says to the UNIT officer. He turns to her, holding his automatic weapon in front like a shield. She smiles; he doesn't smile back. With sudden inspiration, she takes out her Torchwood ID but hides her name. So careful, she has to be so careful, or it could all end. He looks at it, and straightens.

"Ma'am," he says, and salutes.

"Oh God, don't salute." He hesitates but puts his arm down. "What's your name?"

"Harris, ma'am."

"Can you fill me in? What's all this, then?"

He does. He tells her all he knows, bless. Someone should have a word about trust and checking credentials, but she doesn't complain. It's exactly what she needs. She's not familiar with Adipose, something to file away for later, or the concept of creating life from fat.

"Blimey," she says. "Better not let my mum know." The officer doesn't laugh. She thanks him, is about to move away before turning back. "Has there been any word from the Doctor?" she asks, as nonchalant as she can make it.

"Who?" She can't help but deflate a little bit. Not the correct universe, then. But the officer straightens. "Oh, no, I'm afraid there's no word from him. We think he's here, though. Or he was."

At that moment the little white fat creatures lift up into the air, waving, happy to be going home. Rose says good-bye to Private Harris and moves on to an open spot near a barricade. This is her proper universe, but she missed him. She looks around at all of the fat creatures disappearing into the ship. Where is he now? Is he happy?

Someone calls her, not by name. She turns to see a woman with ginger hair, smiling, breathless, saying something about keys and a bin. "That bin there. Just tell her, that bin there."

She's familiar, tugging at Rose's memory. Have they met before? Does Rose know her counterpart? But the woman runs off before Rose can place her. She turns back to look around at the faces in the crowd before walking off, back toward the street corner she'd appeared on, slipping between veils of reality.

***

Mickey successfully hacks into UNIT and into that universe's Torchwood servers. "Still ridiculously easy," he says, with a laugh.

"What about this time difference, yeah?"

He waggles his hand. "It can't be helped, although with the cannon it's not so great anymore since we can control your destination, better than you taking your little vanishing walks."

"I said I was sorry."

"Yeah, yeah." But he grins.

He starts talking, telling her everything he's learned, which is a lot. Most of it doesn't help them, not for the present crisis, which has yet to happen in that universe; they still have their stars, their earth hasn't moved. "Except for what UNIT has on the Doctor. That'll come in useful. They have an entire file just on TARDIS sightings."

Pete interrupts, pulling Rose aside but Mickey and Jackie follow. "We need to see how far this darkness spreads, if it's just this universe and the Doctor's, or all of them. Can you send her to other realities?"

"I think so," says Mickey. "Yeah, sure. But we should be careful, yeah, this things rips a hole in time and space each time we use it."

"Can't be helped. The Doctor will have to fix that, after. You ready?" he asks Rose.

There's a noise from Jackie. They all look at her. "I'm not saying anything," she says. "I know better than to even try. You're still cracked, the lot of you. But I reckon she can't do it alone. Let me have one of those silly things." She holds her hand out. They all stare at her. "I'm not kidding."

"You know, she's right," says Pete. It's everyone's turn to stare at him. Rose starts to protest. "Maybe not Jackie, exactly--"

"Oi."

"But we don't have all the time in the world for this. With more people, the more information we gather, the faster it goes. Fancy a walk between dimensions?" he asks Mickey, who grins and rubs his hands together.

***

Four of them are chosen: Rose, Mickey, Sally, and a young lad named Ross. "Where ya been, Ross?" asks Rose, knocking his shoulder.

"Knee deep in alien tech, courtesy of his majesty over there," he nods at Mickey.

"Oi, don't complain, you love it down there. Ready, everyone?" Mickey nods at Pete who stays behind to monitor the cannon and guide their destinations. They each have scanners now, to do the necessary uplink on their own.

They stand in a row, one by one disappearing in a ball of electricity. Rose hears Ross yell as he vanishes. Sally cries out. Mickey is silent, but grimaces with his eyes scrunched shut. And then it's her turn. She looks at her dad who smiles softly. She braces for the jolt.

It's like being slung through a slingshot, like leaving your legs and your head behind, while your middle goes faster than the rest of you. She comes apart and is put back together again.

She arrives in a world with dinosaurs hitched up to wagons and flying saucers whizzing past. The stench is powerful, a mixture of engine exhaust and manure. Her scanner blips as the uplink starts automatically. She's distracted by what she sees: the women wear long dresses and scarves over their heads, the men wear felt hats. They're all pointing up to the sky.

Rose looks up. The sky is empty.

***

She loses count after universe number twenty-four where Rome never fell and no one smiles. It's no different from the others, even though all of the signs are written in Latin, and people speak something close to Spanish. They're all the same, every single universe with empty skies and bewildered, frightened humans.

The other three dimension travelers report the same thing.

"Then it's your turn again." He nods to her. "Are you ready?"

She is. She's as ready as she'll ever be.

He continues briefing her. "UNIT reported a sighting near the Thames, in an underground facility by the flood barriers, on Christmas during the incident with the big webbed star in the sky and the Empress of the Racnoss." At her blank, confused look, he explains. "Giant red spider."

"Naturally."

"According to UNIT, he stopped her, the Racnoss, from releasing her young onto the world with the help of an unnamed woman, dressed as a bride on her wedding day. Her only other description is that she's ginger."

Rose looks up, surprised. Mickey walks over and she mentally puts the coincidence away for later thought. "I was thinking," he says, handing her the dimension disk and her phone. "You should call us 'Control'. What do you think? Very Matrix."

She laughs and he grins. "Okay, yeah. Thought that was 'Operator'?"

"Can't just copy, can we?"

"Nah, 'course not." They hug, and he leaves her, returning to the dimension cannon. This time he holds up his hands, using his fingers to do the countdown. One, two, and three.

Used to slingshot affect by now, she barely holds her breath this time although she still stumbles when she lands. Getting her bearings, she looks at the buildings, and the sky -- full of stars, happy to see Orion's Belt, she marks north and south, east and west -- and starts running toward the river.

Above her a large webbed star is shot at from the ground, exploding in the sky. She runs faster, until she sees a UNIT truck by the Thames, and an ambulance.

"What happened? What did they find?" She skids to a halt, asking anyone nearby. "Sorry, did they find someone?"

"I don't know," says the woman. "Bloke called the Doctor, or something."

"Well, where is he?" Rose looks around, searching for the TARDIS and that familiar brown pin-stripe suit.

"They took him away. He's dead. I'm sorry. Did you know him? They didn't say his name. It could be any doctor."

Dead, but that can't be right. Her chest hurts. She sees the woman for the first time. It's her, with the ginger hair, with the blue car, the woman in the TARDIS. The bride, but obviously not a bride. Not in this universe, in this world where the Doctor is dead. This is wrong. This is very wrong.

"What's your name?" asks Rose.

"Donna. And yours?"

Rose sees something flicker in and out, a black thing on Donna's back, hears a clicking noise, and remembers that first time, hours and hours ago now, when this woman walked down the street with something on her back. She's not even aware of what she's saying, distracted by the thing she can almost see.

"Why do you keep looking at my back?"

"I'm not." Although she is. When Donna's not looking, Rose shifts, she turns, and disappears.

***

She returns and no one looks directly at her. They know everything, they heard it through her phone or maybe from the information they automatically receive now each time she jumps. "Her name is Donna," she tells them, speaking into the strange quiet. The room is never quiet. "We need to know everything about her."

"Already on it," says Pete in his calm way, and she can see Mickey looking strained and even her mother doesn't meet her eyes. "Are you okay?"

She nods, pulling him to the side to speak privately. "That world wasn't right. In none of our information does he die. That doesn't happen."

He looks at her, touches her arm. "Time can be rewritten. You know that."

"Exactly," she says. "That woman, Donna, I've seen her before. I've seen her lots of times. She was on the TARDIS when we tried calling. She has something on her back."

He steps back from her but he's already making the connection, he's already rubbing at his lip as he figures it out. "An alien?"

"An alien. An alien that rewrites time. I swear this isn't wishful thinking. I could sense it, could almost see it the way light was bending around her, and hear it, an insect of some sort. And, I don't know, maybe it's all this hopping around universes, but it's like I'm meant to run into her."

"I believe you. We were getting strange readings, things in flux."

She lets out a controlled breath. And then Mickey, thank God for Mickey, yells, "I've found her. Donna Noble from Chiswick. She's a temp."

***

She needs to fix this. So that he's alive again, because they need him, the multiverse needs him. She thinks of how to change reality, sees the timelines wind and unwind in her mind.

"I hate to admit it," says Mickey, "but you're absolutely right. I've been going through the information from this new universe, the one where he's dead, and it's not good. It's very far from good. I've sent Ross into a few other realities as well, just to see if things are different in other universes now than before. It's like, all the universes are connected, each different in the details but still the same, one echoes into the other, and the Doctor's universe ripples into everything. Absolutely everything. Each time he's saved the world, he's saved all of them, every world. And now, without him… If he's dead in one universe, he's dead in all of them, even if he was never physically in more than one. It's insane. Already things here are changing. Somehow the dimension cannon's protecting us, so our memories aren't being rewritten."

'What do you suggest?" asks Pete. His question gets nothing but silence.

They're in the conference room. Rose looks through the window. It's only been a half an hour since her return, only a few hours before when the earth was moved, still unexplained. Most of the debris has been cleared.

"I have an idea," she says, and they all turn expectant faces toward her. So she tells them. "Easy. We make friends with that world's UNIT, get them to make a rudimentary time machine, and fix the timeline. Be home in time for tea."

She grins widely when she gets nothing but blank stares.

***

They plot out each conversation with UNIT and each focal point in Donna Noble's life. It's an intricate web of half steps and carefully omitted words, doling out information only when absolutely necessary. She has to be careful, the wrong turn, the wrong step taken and everything could splinter, crumble like sand stones in her hand.

Then the hard part begins. Rose is armed only with her will and the information she can provide. "Send me back to that day, the day he died," she says. "I've already got a special relationship with Harris, although he doesn't know it." She laughs.

"Are you sure you can do this?" Pete asks. He's skeptical that UNIT will just go along. Rose won't be able to tell them who she is, or what she knows, can only give them half-truths and cryptic orders. She'll have to gain their trust with nothing, nothing at all to prove her sincerity. With only her smile and the weight of her knowledge.

"What choice do I have?"

"Right. Ready?"

"Yeah."

She closes her eyes.

***

It is the key that finally convinces them. Rose opens the TARDIS.

The sight of her old friend near death makes Rose stop for the first time since the dimension cannon started working, hits her square in the face with loss. She strokes the console and the TARDIS wakes up a little for her.

"We found it like this," says Captain Magambo. "Beneath the Thames." Rose likes Magambo, dependable and strong. It wasn't easy convincing her of all that needed to be done, but no one wants to live in a world without the Doctor, so they believe her when she says she can fix it.

"Her," corrects Rose. "The last of her kind."

Magambo nods silently in acknowledgement.

Without a word, Rose starts attaching cables to the underside of the console, creating an umbilical connection to the UNIT computers. At her silent example, the UNIT technicians follow suit. She teaches one young woman how to access the TARDIS, how to search for the moment of intervention with the ship's help, finding the exact moment when the world changed. She instructs someone else to search for energy readings surrounding Donna Noble. They need as much information about the alien as possible.

She leaves them with orders, with things she needs: the right computers, the correct data, mirrors and hydro-spanners, chronon energy readers. "And coffee, the good kind, yeah. I'll be back when you're ready for the next step."

It takes five hours relative time, nearly two years subjective, before they're ready for Donna Noble.

***

She sits uncomfortably on the edge of the cot in her office, back in Pete's universe. Whenever she closes her eyes she hears the calm strength of Magambo's voice, she feels the electric charge of the dimension cannon's grip around her stomach, she sees Donna bravely enter the circle of mirrors even though she's so scared.

Rose feels thin, spread out across countless universes. She thinks she's left bits of herself in each time and place she's visited. To be whole again, to be complete. Who knows what changes she's wrought, what causal relations have started for each interference. In a few minutes Mickey will be ready for her to make the final leap into Donna's timeline.

"Why," asks her dad, appearing at the door to her office. He approaches and squats down low so he's at her level. He takes her hands in his. Does he feel how thin she is? The walls are thinning, and so is she. "Why go this time? Do you think she'll fail?"

Rose shakes her head. "No, she'll do it. The Doctor only takes the best." She lowers her eyes away from her father's scrutiny. He kisses her forehead, and she lets him hold her tight. "I can't let her die alone. I used to be her. I am her. We're the same."

"You've done something no one else could have. I'm so proud." She wants to deny it, not because it's not true but because somewhere deep in her heart she knows she's selfish, just a little bit, but her father pulls away. "I know what you're thinking," he says. "And you're wrong."

He leaves her alone again. She sits uncomfortably at the end of her cot, looking through the window to the starless dark sky, thinking of words: two words, specifically.

***

Rose is almost blinded by the daylight. She'd forgotten, in just these past unnumbered dayless hours that have turned into years -- time, time, oh how remarkable and unforgiving a mistress she is, always changing, always twisting into new shapes -- what the sun felt like.

Donna Noble lies in the middle of the street, alone. People have stopped to stare at her. The lorry driver is talking loudly, scared, disturbed. He's killed a woman. It's not his fault.

Rose kneels down. She takes Donna's hand, leans in to speak her two words.


End file.
